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Copyright, 1918 
John Armstrong Ohaloner. 



©CI.A508115 



NO^ 121918 



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The writer — some twenty years ago — had an experience similar to 
that of the hero of Charles Reade's novel "Very Hard Cash" — which 
novel led to a reform of the treatment of persons confined in Insane 
Asylums throughout Great Britain. 

Not being a lawyer, the gifted author of "Very Hard Cash" was 
not equipped to pierce the sophistry and fraud which has gradually 
crept into English legislation with the growth of Private Insane Asy- 
lums, and the increase of that section of the Medical Profession which 
makes a specialty of running sane men and women into Private Mad- 
houses for life, on a perjured charge of insanity, for a handsome con- 
sidf^- ition — a heavy fee. 

The writer — being a law-writer by profession, and author of "The 
Lunacy Law of the World" — a law book of some four hundred pages — 
treating of the Lunacy Laws of Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, 
Germany, Austro-Hungary and the United States — the author — in order 
to write "Chaloner on Lunacy, or The Lunacy Law of the World," 
aforesaid, was forced to penetrate the fuliginous regions of Parliamen- 
tary enactments of the past seventy-five or a hundred years — the 
period in which the healthy and sound English laws concerning Lunacy 
were surreptitiously undermined by interested parties, i. e. proprietors 
of Private Madhouses, Lunacy Quacks, and that branch of the Legal 
Profession sufficiently debauched to aid and abet their villainies — and 
in their stead, the infamous travesties of justice now in force in Eng- 
land raised their poisonous heads, and deprived a sane man or woman 
of notice in a proceeding against his or her sanity, as well as of oppor- 
tunity to appear and defend himself or herself against the charge which 
would imprison him or her in a living Hell — a Madhouse cell — for life. 

The situation is equally damnable the world over. 

A glance at the critiques by the Law Reviews of "Chaloner On 
Lunacy" will show how wide-spread is the evil. 

Reform is notoriously slow. The greater the abuse — the more 
deeply riveted in wealth and power and prestige — the mightier will be 
the resistance. Therefore, it should surprise no intelligent reader to 
hear that the writer is now in his twenty-second year of legal warfare 
to repossess himself of his property rights in New York State — he 
having been illegally declared insane there on March 10th, 1897, after 
having been corruptly lured there from his home at "The Merry Mills", 
Cobham, Virginia, on February 13th, 1897, by his false friend, the late 
Stanford White, acting in collusion with his — the writer's — long es- 
tranged, and hostile brothers and sisters, who, although each a mil- 
lionaire in his or her own right, nevertheless coveted the million or 
two — by recent legacies it now amounts to two million dollars — of the 
writer. 

The writer — on the court record of the past twenty-two years — 
never did or said an irrational thing. Therefore, his hostile brothers, 
and a hostile mule cousin were forced to perjure themselves in order 



to "run the toriter in". This they made no bones about doing. And 
since — woe is me! — a member of the New York Bar since 1885, and in 
good standing — and since — woe is me! — to have to confess it — since 
perjury is practically unwhipped of justice in New York State — the 
statistics showing that it is committed — and nothing said — nothing done 
by anybody — the statistics showing that it is committed at a conserva- 
tive estimate, in seventy-five out of every hundred litigated cases in the 
"Empire State" — in the State of New York — therefore, unlike Great 
Britain, where perjury is a dangerous thing, and relentlessly pursued 
by Justice, even to the ends of the earth — the conspirators against the 
writer's happiness, health, liberty and property, triumphed. The vic- 
tim of a lie was haled to a Madhouse Cell for life, March thirteenth, 
1897, without ever seeing the inside of a court room, or the outside of 
a Judge of any description — to say nothing of the pettiest kind of a 
petty jury! 

After four years of imprisonment at over a thousand pounds a 
year for the privilege — said sum being paid to the Proprietors of the 
Private Insane Asylum in which the writer was confined — to-wit: The 
Society of the New York Hospital, of 15th Street and Fifth Avenue, 
New York — falsely called "Bloomingdale" — at "White Plains, West- 
chester County, New York, where the Insane branch of the New York 
Hospital is situated — twenty miles from the metropolis: after some 
four years imprisonment at White Plains, aforesaid, and a forced mulct 
of his estate to the tune of some four thousand pounds, the writer 
made good his escape, and, after a series of adventures, fetched up in 
Virginia, September 20th, 1901, in the County seat of his County of 
Albemarle, to-wit: Charlottesville, the home of Thomas Jefferson, the 
author of the Declaration of Independence, and on November 6th, 1901, 
was tried in open court by the late Judge John M. White, Judge of the 
County Court of Albemarle County, Virginia, and pronounced sane and 
competent to manage himself and his affairs. 

Since then, the weary fight has gone on and is still going on. It 
has cost the writer in lawyers' fees and expert Medical fees alone, some 
fifteen thousand pounds. It will require three years more for his case 
to run its course through the law courts. He firmly anticipates defeat 
in each and every court. Why, it is not necessary to state. At the 
end of this time, the Great War will be over — when he proposes to 
bring his wrongs to the attention of Congress — Congress by that time 
being able to take its mind off this frightful war — and give the people's 
Representatives and Senators a chance to remedy an evil the courts — 
both State and Federal — both of the State of New York and the United 
States — were powerless to remedy. 

The writer described the situation in a book of some five hundred 
pages entitled "Four Years Behind the Bars of 'Bloomingdale' " or 
"The Bankruptcy of Law in New York". Said book was published in 
1906, and sent to some fifty or more of the leading newspapers of the 
United States. So startling were its revelations regarding high society 
in New York, that only some five out of the fifty dared to notice the 
book. These five gave the book marked praise. 



It therefore occurred to the writer, seven years later, to try the 
effect of verse on the phlegmatic American press. He therefore com- 
posed the piece cle resistance of Scorpio II — at least in a satirical way — 
to-wit: the sequence or chain of seventeen sonnets, treating Lunacy 
Legislation in England and — more particularly — New York State — and 
— woe is me! — once more — some 40% of the States of this Union — be- 
ginning with sonnet No. 74: "Broadway, or 'The Great White Way' — 
to Hell", through sonnet No. 91, which concludes the sequence of ten 
sonnets entitled: "The Scarlet Women". 

These seventeen sonnets paint the situation allegorically — but 
somewhat luridly — if we do say so, who should not. 

A second sequence of ten sonnets, running from sonnet No. 92 
through sonnet No. 101, entitled: "A Missionary" — also paints a subject 
very dear to the writer's heart. 

We mention these sequences on the same altruistic, philanthropic 
impulse which impels a miner to send a man with a red flag to each 
end of the road before touching off a blast of dynamite. 

We are aware that British reviewers are, as a rule, averse to re- 
views being assembled at the rear of a work, and we had made up our 
mind to humour said prejudice and call down no more lightning upon 
our head by assembling any more reviews. But, upon reflection, the 
meat is so strong in Scorpio II that the British reviewer may need a 
friendly arm to lean upon at the first shock. Hence, a carefully cur- 
tailed band of American stretcher-bearers — American reviewers — is 
ready to give first aid to the injured of their braw British Allies. If 
this sounds flippant, we withdraw it, with an apology. But the language 
of one or more of the said stretcher-bearers prompted it. He — or they — 
was — or were — concerned. 

Should the British reviewer agree with his American ally that the 
language is too strong, the writer has only this to say. He goes on 
record that the fighting of the Americans, from now till the victorious 
closa of this dread war, will be a revelation to the heroic allies — to say 
nought of the Hell-doomed Hun — a revelation of ferocity — of gauclia 
certaminis — of joy of battle — almost Homeric in its scope, intensity and 
force. Nothing could surpass the courage of the British, the French, the 
Belgians, the Italians and the other Allied nations — theirs is a valour 
sans peur et sans reproche. But it is a calm valour — in the British case 
— a good-natured valour. Whereas with us it is a hot valour — a valour 
Which shys at taking prisoners — to put it somewhat veiledly. And, as 
the American fights — he writes — shouting his battle-cry: "A Swift! 
A Swift! A rescue! A rescue!" 

Hinc Mae lacrimae! Salaam. 

JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER 
"The Merry Mills," 
Cobham, 

August 21, 1918. Virginia. 



6 
L'ENVOI. 

"Roi ne suis, ni Prince, ni Due, ni Comte aussi, Je suis le sire de Coucy." 

I am "the Master of 'The Merry Mills" 

Which newspaper line tale tells and our role bills. 

A MODERN FREE-LANCE. 



I'm "UEnfant Terrible" of literature, 

Who to high-placed rogues spells discomfiture. 



J. A. C. 



The Troy RECORD, Troy, New York, October 16, 1915. 

The Serpent Of Old Nile. By John Armstrong Chaloner. The 
Palmetto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C. 

Mr. Chaloner may be called the enfant terrible in literature. His 
latest tour de force consists of two blank verse dramas — The Serpent 
Of Old Nile and The Hazard of the Die. Few will deny that sometimes 
he succeeds in reaching very high levels in the management of his 
characters, and in the style of his verse, and the unique personality 
of the author. 



THE TIMES-UNION, Albany, New York, August 4, 1913. 

Scorpio. By J. A. Chaloner. $1.50. The Palmetto Press, Roanoke 
Rapids, North Carolina. 

"Scorpio" is a volume of sonnets in which the author's talent as a 
satirist has been given full play. He is merciless in his attacks upon 
the frailty of man, and his puny indifference to big, vital matters which 
are slowly, but none the less surely, sapping our nation's strength. Yet, 
true poet as he is, no one could revel in the beauty of lighter or more 
delicate fancies, when he turns his thoughts to things that are not 
man-made. As he writes of Kipling, it can be said of him: "His work 
is palpitant with strength and blood; elastic vigor leaps in every line". 

• 

KIPLING. 

Thy work is palpitant with strength and blood 
Elastic vigor leaps in every line. 
There fire of Elizabethan hardihood 
Far-reaching and vig'rous as of yore, doth shine. 
There glint of bayonet and roll of drum — 
That world-encircling drum-tap of the race — 
Flash on the eye and pulse-stir with their hum — 
There strides the British soldier's sturdy pace. 
New life didst thou impart to British verse. 
In Alexandrian doldrums did she swoon — 



"In irons" to Formality's cold curse — 

To her fair sails you came a breezy boon! 

Long may you live to voice your peoples' will 

A voice whose utterance needs not strength but skill. 

Mr. Chaloner is a graduate of Columbia University and a member of 
the bar. He comes of distinguished ancestry, being the lineal descend- 
ant — on the distaff side of the house — of Peter Stuyvesant, the last 
Dutch Governor of New York — then New Amsterdam — and John Win- 
throp, appointed by King Charles II, Governor of Massachusetts, be- 
sides being a blood relative of the following three prominent Generals 
in the Revolution: General Nathaniel Greene, recognized as the sec- 
ond General on our side, after Washington — General Francis Marion, 
of South Carolina, known to History as "The Swamp Fox", from the 
trouble he gave, and the chases he led the superior British forces, 
through his native swamps, at the head of his small body of horse — 
which makes our author a blood relative of Charlotte de Corday, Gen- 
eral Marion being of French Huguenot ancestry, and, through the 
Heroine of the French Revolution a blood relative of the greatest of 
French dramatists, Corneille. Lastly, John Armstrong Chaloner is the 
great-great-grandson of General John Armstrong, on Washington's staff 
at the British victory of the Brandy wine; and author of the famous 
Newburgh Addresses, which came near splitting the new-born American 
Republic in half, by raising such resentment in the breasts of the offi- 
cers and army when stationed at Newburgh-on-Hudson (after peace 
with Great Britain) because Congress refused to make good the arrears 
of pay of the men who had saved them from the halter — that the army 
was ripe for taking their pay at the point of the sword — and nothing 
but a hurried trip to Newburgh, and the prayers and tears of Washing- 
ton, saved the situation. Mr. Chaloner also claims relationship with 
the oldest and wealthiest Knickerbocker families. 



THE BIRMINGHAM AGE-HERALD, Birmingham, Alabama, August 
10, 1913. 

Scorpio, A Book of Sonnets. By J. A. Chaloner. 

J. A. Chaloner has arranged in book form a number of his poems 
entitled "Scorpio" (Sonnets) and among them are some very clever 
verses. 

Perhaps the best one is entitled: 

OPPORTUNITY. 

Opportunity, thou Mother of events! 
Who bides his time eventual wins his game, 
Sternly refraining from sundry — all attempts, 
Till Opportunity doth back the same. 



8 



Opportunity's the beck'ning on of Fate, 

The mystic harbinger of sure success, 

When that clock strikes let no one dare be late, 

Or this world's chances risk beyond redress. 

Opportunity's the Hand of the Unseen, 

Of Nature working with the world of men, 

Her fair Excalibur of metal keen 

Presented once at least to each one's ken. 

Observe the times with patience back'd by nerve, 

When the time's ripe — dart forward! — sans a swerve. 



COLUMBUS, OHIO, JOURNAL, Sunday, August 3, 1913. 
Scorpio, A Book of Sonnets. By J. A. Chaloner. 

Sharp, biting, stinging sonnets that lash and bring the streak of 
blood to the surface — such are these. Administered with a smirk of 
scorn, with the lips upturned and teeth showing from between a snarl. 
Unrelenting, they strike to right and left, always with the same crack- 
ing stroke that makes one wish to flee from them and yet attracts be- 
cause of their hideousness. Merciless they are. Fearless they might 
be were there any possibility of anyone's resenting their attacks on 
present day objects and subjects. They are truly whip lashes as the 
title suggests, and the reader is as glad to quit reading them as he 
would be to escape from beneath the blows of a cat-o'-nine-tails. 

The life story of the poet is interesting, for he is legally sane in 
Virginia and insane in New York. Four years he spent in "Blooming- 
dale" where he had been committed by designing friend-enemies, he 
charges. He is heir to millions, and a number of years he has spent in 
crying his case from the housetops. Truly an interesting man, good 
for study of psychologists, but as a sonneteeer — ugh, disagreeable. His 
misfortune, his bitter mind, surely should not be foisted as foundations 
for, as the reason-for-being for these formally neat sonnets. — W. M. K. 



SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, August 3, 1913. 

Scorpio and other sonnets. By J. A. Chaloner. 

This is another of the amusing brochures in which Chaloner, who 
has been declared insane in New York and sane in North Carolina and 
Virginia, pays his respects to his critics and incidentally prints some 
sonnets of varying quality. The book is amusing because of the 
author's frankness and his ability in repartee. It certainly demon- 
strates that he is in full possession of his faculties. 



9 

NEW YORK CITY MORNING TELEGRAPH, Monday, July 21, 1913. 

Oh, that our sane and smug citizens could take a leaf from the 
book ("Scorpio") of John Armstrong Chaloner, who, though officially 
aberrated in the State of New York, is unofficially and tremendously 
sane and interesting in all other States. For Mr. Chaloner, it may be 
said in truth, that he is never dull. I cite a specimen of his verse aimed 
at one held by the mob to be truly great. 

It is his twenty-third sonnet to "The Shaving of Shag Pat" 

'Gainst shag "Pat" Shaw take I the field once more — 

The tail of "Scorpio" begins to swish — 

In that "bum" dramatist and bloody bore 

To plant its sting the Zodiac doth wish. 

To be quite frank Shaw is its chopping block 

It's "easy mark" and "good-thing-to-push-along" 

Pat Shaw, whose "bum" dramas are but poppycock 

And hypocrisy, mendacity, stink strong. 

The Shaviad of Shag Pat Shaw this starts — 

0' my fights with smug Pat Shaw the Iliad — 

Divided up in books, cantos, stanzas — parts 

Wherein Shaw "takes the count" — this Shaviad, 

By "Scorpio" Pat Shaw will be raze, 

This brazen "Zingeur" will be Men plante! 

I'll wager that Shaw finds in Chaloner his true discoverer. 

Another sonnet called "Sans a Wedding Garment" is as sane and as 
able a handling of the Jap question as it has been my pleasure to see. 

It's rather too bad that there are not more persons afflicted with 
the same able brand of insanity. 



BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, SUN, Sunday, August 3, 1913. 

Weird and daring "Scorpio" and its author. 

John Armstrong Chaloner, author of "Scorpio" and whose ancestral 
estate is "The Merry Mills", Cobham, Albemarle County, Virginia, is a 
gentleman of birth and breeding whose unusual experiences of life 
have set him apart from other men in a somewhat pathetic way. Mar- 
ried in 1888 to the authoress, Amelie Rives, and divorced from her in 
1895, owing to incompatability of temper, adjudged insane by New 
York law and accounted sane in every other State in the Union, John 
Armstrong Chaloner, master of a fortune committed to the guardian- 
ship of others, is a man who has broken his way from asylum captivity 
to freedom and who, entrenched amid his native hills and supported 
by his fellow citizens and neighbors, has used his legal education and 
training to attack with unanswerable arguments the present laws of 
the United States as they pertain to the commitment of those adjudged 
insane to lunatic asylums. 



10 

Originator of that historic question, "Who's looney now?" Mr. 
Chaloner, while incarcerated in "Bloomingdale", applied his active mind 
to self-development and the acquirement of the art of writing sonnets. 
He has conceived the idea of publishing a poetical quarterly — an idea 
evolved, he says, by Lord Byron, but never carried into effect by that 
poet. 

To this end, Mr. Chaloner has published "Scorpio No. I", containing 
"A Poet-Caravan", and other sonnets to the number of fifty-six, some of 
which were written during his detention at "Bloomingdale" and others 
as late as June of the present year. In these the author has certainly 
exhibited the courage of his convictions in the matter of unrestricted 
criticism and lampooning of people and things that fall beneath his 
displeasure. 

In a prologue of some thirteen pages the author flays without re- 
serve the system and persons instrumental in having him adjudged in- 
sane in New York State and confined as a lunatic in "Bloomingdale" 
Asylum. The board of Governors of the institution and others connect- 
ed with the case he calls "as gilded a set of rascals as ever glared a 
reader in the eye!" and of them he says: 

"Such gay birds of gilded plumage plucked us neatly of some 
$20,000 in coldest cash, mulcted from us as we lay helpless in a cell, at 
the hands of Stanford White — since gone to a higher tribunal — and 
later by his brother-in-law, Prescott Hall Butler, also dead." 

His immediate family fare no better at his hands, since at their 
instigation the charges against his sanity were made. In sonnet XXXIV 
he writes: 

THEY ARE SEVEN. 

With seven brothers and sisters am I curst, 

My juniors, they, and all are fair to see. 

In them doth beauty make of mask the worst 

That e'er in noble guise hid treachery. 

The women charming as the men are brave — 

Two have brave records in the Spanish War — 

With charm which the beholder soft doth lave, 

As cooling unguents o'er a burning scar. 

Yet these lovely ladies left me to dry-rot 

Linger and perish in a noisome cell 

And yet these warlike brothers blood forgot 

And doomed me untried to a living Hell! 

Three ladies and four gentlemen's the roll 

Their record's knell do I now slowly toll. 

Humiliation over the charges against his sanity have caused Mr. 
Chaloner to revert in the spelling of his name to ancient usaget instead 



t The author is sprung from the Chaloners of Denbighshire, Wales. 
Before emigrating to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1710, the family 
name was spelled Chaloner — thereafter corrupted to Chanler. 



11 

of continuing to write the name Chanler, as other members of the 
family. 

He is the eldest of eight children of the late John Winthrop Chan- 
ler, of New York and Charleston, South Carolina. Through his father 
he is descended from John Winthrop, the first Governor of Massachu- 
setts, and from Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor of New Am- 
sterdam. His mother was a granddaughter of the original John Jacob 
Astor, and upon reading, he says, June 21, 1913, in a London dispatch 
that William Waldorf Astor had acquired the London "Morning Post" 
in addition to already owning' the London "Pall-Mall" Gazette and the 
London "Observer", he notes the event in sonnet LVI after the follow- 
ing satiric fashion: 

THE FUTURE DUKE OP ASTEROID, OR "COUSIN WILLIE". 

Bravo! Cousin Willie! Punch 'em once again! 

Buy another paper, and then keep on! 

And show these "bloomin', perishin' " Englishmen 

You're hound to win the game you're bent upon. 

And when you're made the Duke of Asteroid — 

The Duke of Astor'd be too big for you — 

See that a cleaver's on your arms deployed — 

A butcher's cleaver thereon doth spring in view. 

The Butcher of Waldorf's son a genius was — 

No greater Merchant Prince did ever live — 

So of this genius give the natal cause 

To axe and chopping block all honor give! 

That my blue blood mingled with thy humble strain 

Doth please me much — I love the people plain. 

For the press in general he expresses undying gratitude, calling 
newspapers "The Watch Towers of Liberty", as in sonnet XIX: 

A PANEL HOUSE. 

The Watch-Towers of Liberty — the Press, 

Those mighty bulwarks against tyranny — 

Whose power for good doth all men deep impress 

Some outposts have that won't stand scrutiny. 

Instead of Watch-Towers these things are "dead-falls" — 

Oubliette-dungeons of a panel-house! 

To sweep whom the besom of destruction calls 

As loudly 's cleanliness against a louse! 

By nature these are grinders of the poor 

By nature these are toadies to the rich 

And to tyranny and crime push wide the door 

And for furtive murder have an eager itch. 

Such an one is the "Times," of Brockton, Mass. 

In Shoetown did said dark crimes come to pass. 



12 

He asserts: 

" 'Tis an axe I use when I go after Shaw." 

The vulgarity of the "turkey trot" moves him into forceful speech 
and his sonnet XXXII is about as stern and correct an estimate of that 
perverted form of entertainment as we have yet seen: 

THE TURKEY TROT. 

Vulgarity, debauchery, hand in hand 

Now whirl their way down Gotham's gilded halls. 

The spectacle so shocks it makes us stand 

At gaze in horror! So the sight appals! 

Debauched cads enticing maidens on 

To "trot" and "hug" in most unseemly maze 

And all the meretricious airs to don 

That meet the Cabaret's licentious gaze! 

To writhe and squirm and wriggle, turn and twist, 

To faint and languish in their partner's grasp, 

T' obey the guidance of an amorous wrist, 

As hip to hip their yielding forms they clasp! 

This sight in New York's seen 'most any day. 

Hip! Hip! "Hooraw /" it makes the demons say. 

A talent for sonnet-writing developed in an Insane Asylum could 
scarcely be judged by literary standards applied to the gifts of poets 
nurtured in happier circumstances. That the author is an embittered 
man is but natural; that he is a keen, observing, and scholarly man is 
evidenced by what he writes. 

"Our motto — originated by ourselves — is: 'Leave Me Alone,' which 
has for crest the figure of a grizzly bear, walking quietly along." 



BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, ADVERTISER, Saturday, December 20, 
1913. 

We are sweetly toasted by John Armstrong Chaloner in "Scorpio 
No. 2" (Palmetto Press): 

THE TOURNEY. 

I love an enemy that strikes out bold! 

To th' Boston "Advertiser" doff I my hat 

E'en tho' he lives where one eats beans grown cold 

Or beans e'en hot as H — 1 — "all's one for that." 

I love the shock and clamour of the joust! 

I love the roar! I love the battle's din! 

As they charge at me from my selle^ to oust 

t Saddle. 



13 

As I hold firm my pen to keep selle in! 
'Midst press o' th' knights o' th' pen I love to ride 
Where sword meets sword, or spear, or gleaming crest! 
Where the good red blood flows in a silent tide 
Where each grim swordsman doth his d — dest best! 
I' th' thick o' th' press o' th' knights I love to be 
When I feel my snow-white charger under me. 

By this time Mr. Chaloner must be riding in gore to his stirrups. 
With his broadsword, or stiletto, or lance, or club, or snickersnee, or 
shotgun, he is daily as diligent as a bookkeeper at his desk. Now that 
he is paying his militant respects to States and cities as well as per- 
sons, there's no end to material. We are gladdened with a promise of 
"Scorpio No. 3." 



RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, EVENING JOURNAL, Wednesday, November 
19, 1913. 

Scorpio No. II. Containing "The Epic of Waterloo," "Surcease" and 
Other Sonnets. By John Armstrong Chaloner. 1913. Palmetto 
Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C. 194 pp. Paper, 35 cents. 

This second number of Mr. Chaloner's" poetic quarterly" is not 
different in policy from the original "Scorpio," but it is new in con- 
tents, and therefore deserving of a new review. 

What attitude to adopt toward Mr. Chaloner's work is a puzzle. 
Once adopt an angle of vision, and it is easy to proceed to criticism. 
Some will be whimsical and slyly dodge the issue. Others will be 
facetious and with sheer cunning fail to face the facts. A few will 
hail him as a martyr too long silent and now justly vocal. There are 
those who find in his work real merit, and can point you to passages of 
rare appreciation of nature and love of humanity. 

But whatever the critic's attitude will be, this much seems certain, 
that in any consideration of Mr. Chaloner's output a clear line of 
distinction must be drawn between the motive behind the verses, and 
the intrinsic worth of the product itself. We are disposed to treat 
Scorpio No. II with consideration in the first of these counts. 

Whether Mr. Chaloner is insane in New York and sane in Virginia, 
or insane or sane in both States, it is certain that his nerves are ex- 
quisitely high strung. The tension is almost at the snapping point, as 
exhibited in his verses. He is a poet of the individual, for all his show 
of defending the universe of mankind against the foes who have harmed, 
after all, only him. 

The personal equation could not be more potent with a writer than 
it is with Mr. Chaloner. All he does is colored with his own loves and 
prejudices, instinctive with his especial promptings. His songs spring 
from his breast alone. When it is remembered that his breast has borne 



14 

sorrows of peculiar poignancy, whether rightly or wrongly, the viru- 
lence of his attacks can be accounted for. 

We do not know that excuses for the motive of this author's verses 
are necessary, but we have made this explanation rather of the cause 
of their characteristics. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sonnet on the Sonnet is: 

"A sonnet is a moment's monument, 

Memorial from the soul's eternity 

To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, 

Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, 

Of its own arduous fullness reverent. 

Carve it in ivory or in ebony, 

As day or night may rule; and let time see 

Its flowering crest impearled and orient. 

A sonnet is a coin; its face reveals 

The soul, its converse, to what power 'tis due; 

Whether for tribute to the august appeals 

Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue, 

It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, 

In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death." 

The sixteenth of the sonnets in Scorpio No. 2, is entitled "The Mace- 
donian Phalanx of the Muse; or the Sonnet." For the purpose of con- 
trasting the two conceptions of the sonnet and to show Mr. Chaloner's 
reason for adopting the form for his scourgings, we reproduce the piece: 

"The three marching Quatrains and then — their charge! 

The headlong fiery dash o' th' couplet's rush 

O' th' sonnet, doth 'arms and the man' enlarge — 

Enables him all enemies to crush! 

Upon its onset do all foes go down 

Pierced by the spears which follow rank on rank 

Firm as the spears of him of Macedon — 

Of glitt'ring steel a rythmic moving bank! 

The tread of marching men is in the beat 

O' th' Shakespeare sonnet's decasyllabon 

Within its numbers do all measures meet 

For him who th' strings o' th' lute can play upon. 

The foe is broken by the sonnet's charge, 

As break the waves upon the sea's calm marge." 

Walt Whitman, than whom there has not been a truer poet, himself 
confessed to a "barbaric yawp." Mr. Chaloner strikes you as a sort 
of newer Whitman. But his language is much plainer, his terms are 
much more naked, the red blood seems to flow curdled in his veins and 
behind his "barbaric yawp" there is none of Whitman's soul and 
strength and love. Instead of love Mr. Chaloner would use hate, and 
no malcontent can long gain the public ear. 



15 

This man can never be a poet while he discredits all of humanity, 
and will call every man a villain: 

'TIS BUT A SPAN. 

But brief sojourners on this bank of Time 
Which borders on the stream Eternity 
'Tis but a span from babyhood to prime 
From prattling childhood to maturity. 
'Tis but a span from then to hoary age — , 
That sombre ante-chamber of grim death — 
Where is prepared the last act on the stage 
The final dread surrender of the breath. 
This being so, 'tis droll that people act 
As tho' each held life-lease an aeon long 
And had with God Almighty a compact 
That held each guiltless of each dirty wrong 
Man's but a fool — when all is said and done 
And 'tis as fool's his course on earth is run. 

The author's eternal cry is of wrongs done to him. Whether 
one of the sonnets starts with Napoleon or a green parrot or a slit 
skirt, in the majority of cases some personal grievance, which he 
seeks to elevate to universal proportions, will be aired and driven 
with the "sonnet charge" in the couplet. Note in this connection the 
following: 

ROBINSON CRUSOE. 

0' th' human voice I've grown so deadly sick — 

Sick of its lying and chicanery — 

That I've bought a parrot — yes — I've done the trick! 

The royal bird now appertains to me. 

Th' imperial bird hath from the tropics flown — 

On em'rald wing shot o'er with ruby red — 

And ta'en his perch within my merry home 

And swings beside me as I write in bed. 

His warlike eye doth blaze as he thinks o'er 

The wrongs that have been heaped on martyred me! 

The emblem he of internecine war 

'Twixt me and th' thieves who hold my property! 

From time to time I'll sing what he doth say — 

I'm frank to say 'tis anything but pray. 

Some are moved to pity by a tale of woe, and will remember the 
teller with sympathy for a while. But this thing of continued incessant 
ding-donging on private ills makes poorly relished poetic food for the 
public, and we are so free as to predict that each of the numbers of 
Mr. Chaloner's "poetic quarterly" will meet with less and less favor 
so long as he continues in this strain. 

Mr. Chaloner's attitude toward the adverse ones among his critics 
is not to be justified on any grounds. The fierceness of his retort and 



16 

the consummate conceit of his verse are both shown in this reply to a 
criticism in the Cleveland "Plain-Dealer," sub-titled: "A Cry from the 
Small Unwashed." 

"John Armstrong Chaloner has posed before the public in various 
guises, most of them unpleasant. In 'Scorpio No. I' he appears as a 
cynic, flaying folly with the scorpion whip and using verse, or, at least, 
rhymes, as his jolting vehicle. Enough to say, it is all very Chanlerish" 
—Cleveland "Plain-Dealer," August 16, 1913. 

How much did Rockefeller pay to you 
To lie about me in that barefaced way? 
Notorious 'tis my rhymes are clean put through, 
There's ne'er a "jolt" in anything I say. 
Rhyme comes as easy-natural to me 
As second nature, as to you a lie 
So ne'er a "jolt" in verse by me you'll see — 
As rare in me as truth by you's come by! 
Rockefeller hung shall be by my strong pen 
As high's his brother Haman in his day, 
In spite of subsidized newspapermen 
Who lick his boots with gusto, day by day, 
Scorpio's lash their unwash'd back doth feel, 
Hence we're amused by a Plain- Squealers squeal. 

If the critic of the "Plain-Dealer" is so deserving of utter scorn, 
why ever did a poet to whom rhyme comes as "easy-natural" as second 
nature squander as many as fourteen lines on his accursed head? If 
Mr. Chaloner had stopped to think a moment he would have known that 
some tired servant of the typewriter, though subaltern and himself lit- 
tle protected, sought to protect a royal purple pamphlet from all the 
attacks he could by sawing off his criticism before his anger had reached 
its force, and that the Oil King's money had less to do with the re- 
marks to which Mr. Chaloner takes exception than anything in the 
world. 

There is no need to mention the instances where phrases absolutely 
unpoetic, not to say vulgar, are used in Mr. Chaloner's sonnets, or to 
comment upon his sallies at Jerome and others who have aroused his 
ire. The whole effort is sad — and the sadder because the author has an 
astounding vocabulary of its sort, a masterful vivacity of diction, and an 
aptitude for occasional writing that is unusual. — B. M. 



BALTIMORE SUN, Sunday, November 23, 1913. 

CHALONER BREAKS OUT AGAIN IN TORRID VERSE. 

Scores New York Society, Lawyers, Insanity Experts and Newspapers 

in "Scorpio No. 2." 

John Armstrong Chaloner is a poet who wields words like a whip, 
entitling his volumes "Scorpio." Number Two, has just appeared, with 



17 

food for indignation on the part of those stung by his lash. The Lon- 
don "Academy" calls him a "metrical bruiser" who has come to the 
conclusion that you can "put a man to sleep" with a sonnet, as a prize 
tighter does with a finished blow. Mr. Chaloner's sonnets are blows. 
His opinion of New York society, lawyers, newspapers, and insanity 
experts has not lost one degree of its heat. In this number, he has son- 
nets on Waterloo, giving Napoleon quite a good write-up, on "Alec in 
Wonderland," eight of these; Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Hamilcar; and 
a long "Tale of Israfel," on war-rent Mexico, and 100 others, but it is in 
tender passages like this that he excels; 

JAIL BIRD JEROME. 

(Evidently referring to the poker episode of Coaticook.) 

Who'd ever guess that phrase would near-fit thee! 

And yet it doth, and close as a skull-cap! 

To deny the soft impeachment may not be 

No matter how much bluff thy lie doth cap. 

To spend thy life in jail would do no harm — 

No harm to thee and surely none beside — 

But your big rascal clients would take alarm 

And said suggestion fearfully deride! 

The ruffling robbers of the Poultry Trust — 

The rogues who pushed up eggs — when chance they saw 

And who in limbo were so promptly thrust — 

Such are the clients that you choose in law! 

In landing thee in jail in Coaticook 

Destiny on thee Poetic Justice took. 

And thus he pays his respects to the press of New York: 

I'M NOT THE MAN THAT WROTE "TA-RA-RA-BOOM-DE-AY." 

Not the man that wrote "To-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay," 

I'm not a Cohan and I'm not a Strauss — 

But I am the man "The Yellows" holds at bay — 

Reduced them to the silence of a mouse! 

The critic of the Evening "World" sulks deep 

Lo! his torrential pen hath ceased to flow! 

From out his leathern lungs one hears no peep 

When he sees "put across" red "Scorpio" 

The Evening "Journal" is in the same plight 

Great Brisbane's fluent pen is clean gone dry 

It makes me smile — as these lines I indite — 

It truly doth — so help me Jimminy! 

Not the man that wrote "Ta-Ra-Ra- Boom-De- Ay!" 

But "on the job" when 't comes to free pen play! 

"The way is very lone," sings Chaloner, "since Swinburne died, 
scarce poet do I see." 



18 

A WANDERER. 

I wander o'er the paths of History 
Led by the beck'ning finger of the Muse 
O'er fairy regions — Romance — Mystery 
O'er all the facts of life do I deep muse. 
The field is wide! The way is very lone 
Since Swinburne died scarce poet do I see 
So make I o'er this realm my way alone 
The Muse alone have I for company. 
Sometimes the way is fairy-like forlorn 
Steeped in the haunted moonshine of moonbeams 
Sometimes the way is black as night with storm 
As o'er the billows the storm-petrel screams. 
Moonlight or dark the way gleams brilliantly 
For the Muse's torch is beacon unto me. 

BOTANY BAY or THE PRESS MURDEROUS. 
(Dedicated to the Philadelphia "Inquirer.") 

"Ever since reading some of John Armstrong Chaloner's poetry we 
have been at a loss to know on what grounds it was that Virginia 
brought in a minority report on that chap's sanity." — Philadelphia "In- 
quirer," July 25, 1913. 

Some members of the press are criminal! 

For them Journalism 's Botany Bay — 

Receiving-House for felony, crime and all 

Dastardly tricks at which the wicked play! 

Near-murderers — rapists — incendiarists — 

Who'd fire tenement of a thousand lives — 

Forgers — thieves — perjurers — plagiarists 

Who, if they had their choice would sleep in "dives"f 

The scum of letters, is in short, thrown up 

Spewed out — vomited on affronted earth! 

One wonders where such offal did spring up 

What criminal purlieus Mushed e'en at their oirth! 

The black lies i' th' Philada "Ink-Liar" 

Pale Ananias' fires as a liar! 

But he calls himself "A Maker," which, as he explains is the Greek 
origin of the word poet, and sings: 



t Dive, a place of low resort where drunkards and harlots consort 
together." New Websterian Dictionary. 



19 

A MAKER. 
(The Greek origin of the word poet.) 

When I write sonnets I review the world 

From Adam's time even unto today. 

That's why my brow with beady drops is pearled 

That's why a sonnet leaves me fatigue! 

I do not mean by this that I'm played out 

By worshipping the Muse in fourteen lines 

But that I feel something I've been about 

That something I've been at, my mind opines. 

The wealth of all my learning is gone o'er 

The years I toiled at University 

The years that — since — I've toiled o'er musty law 

And the years that teeming life observed have I. 

My life of fifty years — of years full round! 

Is swift deployed when I the sonnet sound. 

Mr. Chaloner is rather more than frank in his opinion of New 
York society, expressing his opinion in this sonnet on "A Modern 
Medusa, the Female Face of the New York '400' ": 

A MODERN MEDUSA 

Or 

THE FEMALE FACE OF THE N. Y. "400." 

Hard 's a "pelter's" is its physiognomy! 

And just about as bad as "'pelter" — some 

At this, some critics may cry out "Oh, my!" 

How can he The '400' so sore sum!" 

To which I swift reply, "Not all, my friend, 

Are thus intended to be limned by me, 

Tho' some — if truth be told must be so penned 

Although the penning grieve me grievously, 

Purse-proud conceit and coldness — hearts of flint 

Mean-birth — by Fortune's wheel made sudden rich — 

Are on their faces stamped by Nature's mint 

Whilst of charity show they less than witch! 

The daughters of the poor do stand aghast 

As o'er their doings their pure eyes are cast. 



BROOKLYN EAGLE, Brooklyn, New York, November 13, 1913. 

A SECOND "HUDIBRAS." 

John Armstrong Chaloner has taken to issuing (through the Pal- 
metto Press, Roanoke Rapids, N. C.) a quarterly in verse which is 
called "Scorpio." The second number contains a series of sonnets, in 



20 

which he expresses his dissatisfaction with, and contempt for, most 
social and political institutions. He seems to go back for his model, in 
some respects, to "Hudibras," and his verse is not without wit, although 
often without justice. His vocabulary is often the English of the 
eighteenth century, and the pamphlet becomes interesting as a literary 
curiosity. 

PENDANTS TO SONNET "OPPORTUNITY;' p. 7. 

OPPORTUNITY. 
II. 

'Twas opportunity gave Cromwell play 

Opportunity made Napoleon 

Gave each field of battle on which to display 

The gifts Pate's hand had each rich showered on. 

'Tis opportunity that makes the man 

Never can man make opportunity 

From the knees of the Gods descends the plan 

In accord with which whirls the world — pardie! 

To think otherwise is to think like fool 

And lie in one's heart like a damned knave 

History proves what we say is the rule 

And the converse, a drunken doggrel stave. 

Pate in her womb forms the times and the man 

And when time is full ripe, hands him Her plan. 

OPPORTUNITY. 

III. 
An opportunist is a gambler fell 
A lousy rascal that lacks principle 
A dirty dog whose soul is food for H — 1 
Who'll piper pay — interest and principal! 
A rev'rent waiter upon Destiny 
Until the dread hour on Pate's clock is struck 
Is one the Gods regard with sympathy 
Graciously smile upon, and wish him luck. 
'Tis such an one who keeps his weapons bright — 
Sword, shield and armour burnished for the fray — 
Whose mind is firm made up — and made up right — 
To dash at once where Conscience points the way. 
Who holds in leash his passions — Dogs of War — 
Till Fate cries: "Havoc! And let slip! Go far!" 

J. A. CHALONER, 
August 22, 1918. "The Merry Mills." 




NEWSPAPER REVIEWS 

OF 

" FOUR YEARS BEHIND THE BARS/' 

NEW YORK WORLD, November 11, 1906. 

"One may search fiction high and low for a case like this 
one in real life. It is one of the most remarkable stories of 
modern times. Here is a man of independent means, a man 
of affairs, a brilliant writer, an ardent sportsman and clever 
raconteur, sent to Bloomingdale, adjudged hopelessly insane, 
'progressive,' the physicians call his case." 



"NEWS AND OBSERVER," Raleigh, North Carolina. Oc- 
tober 18, 1906. 

I 
"Readers of the News and Observer will recall the mys- 
terious sensation occasioned ten years ago by the incarcera- 
tion in Bloomingdale Asylum, in New York, and the subse- 
quent escape of John Armstrong Chanlei J Tthe wealthy Vr- 
ginian and member of the New York Bar. His story is 
fraught with romance and mystery. 

Author of Distinguished Ancestry. 

As stated, Mr. Chanler is a citizen of Virginia ; where he 
still resides at his four hundred acre estate, "Merry Mills." 
He is a mixture of distinguished Southern and Dutch ances- 
try, and his blood is such as to warrant that he will make an 
unrelenting fight for what he conceives to be his rights and 
against injustice. His parental grandfather, a personal friend 
of Calhoun, left Charleston, South Carolina, where his for- 
bears had steadily resided since about 1710, when they first 
left Wales for the New World, about 20 years before the war 
between the States, came to New York to live and married 



»»f* «■■« in **** v 



into the New York branch of the Winthrop family. The first 
of that family to come to this country was John Winthrop, 
first Governor of Massachusetts. This marriage also connected 
the Chanlers with Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor 
of New Amsterdam, now New York. In Charleston, the Chan- 
lers had always been members of one of the three learned 
professions, the Church, the Law, or Medicine." 



RICHMOND EVENING JOURNAL, April 15, 1907. 

TELLS WHY THEY SENT HIM TO AN ASYLUM. 

John Armstrong Chanler's Strange Book, "Four Years 
Behind the Bars of Bloomingdale" — What Experts Say. 

It is seldom, indeed, that one finds such strange — almost 
fantastic — reading as that included within the two black cov- 
ers of John Armstrong Chanler's remarkable book "Four 
Years Behind the Bars of Bloomingdale, or the Bankruptcy 
of Law in New York." 

This volume, the publication of which has time and 
again been discussed in nearly all the newspapers of the coun- 
try is no figment of the author's fancy. It is based on facts, 
yet stranger facts ne'er were printed, and had the work been 
advertised as a mere romance, critics would have scoffed at 
its improbability. 

The story of sane men being imprisnoned behind the bars 
of lunatic asylums is nothing new. Charles Reade threshed 
out this subject many years ago, and following his story, 
"Hard Cash," came numerous newspaper controversies anent 
the treatment of the insane and the alleged insane. 

Documents in Evidence. 

But in the Chanler volume we have something tangible 
— something definite — with all the "documents in evidence." 
In fact, the book, which the writer styles a "Human docu- 
ment," is based entirely on court papers, as follows: The 



3 



New York proceedings in 1897 and 1899 and the proceedings 
in Virginia in 1901 and in North Carolina in 1905. 

Apropos of "documents in evidence," it may be well to 
say right here, that "Four Years Behind the Bars" is a 
wretchedly arranged book, which carries a good deal of su- 
perfluous matter in the way of notarial acknowledgments, 
clerks' certificates and legal verbosities. 

Mr. Chanler started out at the outset with the determi- 
nation not to ask his readers to take anything for granted, 
and so he presents every paper in duly authenticated form. 
In the case of so high-minded a gentleman, we would have 
been willing to accept his word in every instance and not to 
have required the proofs. 

Some friends should have tackled his manuscript with 
an axe and chopped out all this useless verbiage, for it is a 
positive disadvantage to the volume, and will scare off many 
readers. 

The author should have said his say in a concise preface, 
and then let the legal papers follow in the form of an appen- 
dix. 

All this criticism, mark you, pertains to a defect which in 
no way involves Mr. Chanler 's literary style. It is meant in 
the kindest spirit, and as an explanation to people, who other- 
wise might be scared off by what, at the first glance, looks 
like a very ponderous effort. 

A Master Penman. 

And now to come down to the heart of things: If the 
reader once gets the swing of the volume, he will find it weird- 
ly, fascinatingly and entrancingly interesting, and what is 
more, he will quickly perceive that this so-called madman 
Chanler is a master penman — a man who is capable of ex- 
pressing the most subtle ideas and the most delicate distinc- 
tions of thought in the choicest language. 

The reader will also find himself borne swiftly along in 
the current of thought by a wondrous vocabulary, which flows 
as musically and with as swift a current as a mountain stream. 
At times, indeed, the stream grows turbulent and ebullient 



and fretful, but it is always clear, always masterful and al- 
ways fascinating. 

Apropos of all this, it may be said that Mr. Chanler 
owes his strange fate in life to these very qualities, and to his 
remarkable mind, whose febrile activity is so strikingly un- 
usual that it has led many people, doubtless in good faith, 
to mistake his eccentricities for symptoms of aberrationTf^in 
short, the author, as one of the experts who examined |him 
has said, first attracted attention and brought woe upon him- 
self by having an intellect far in advance of most of his 
brethren. 

It is not within the scope of this criticism to detail Chan- 
ler's life story. Suffice to say that he, the scion of wealthy 
and aristocratic forbears, was committed to Bloomingdale 
Hospital, New York, in March, 1897, and detained there 
nearly four years, when he made his escape and hurried un- 
der an alias to Philadelphia, where, of his own volition, he 
remained six months under the supervision of alienists who 
pronounced him absolutely sane and entirely capable of man- 
aging his own affairs. 

From the Quaker City the fugitive — for such he was in 
every respect — went to Lynchburg, where he remained sev- 
eral weeks under care of another alienist, and then he reap- 
peared before the public gaze in Albemarle and instituted 
those court proceedings which focused so much attention 
upon him. 

The Virginia courts, as well as those of North Carolina, 
made a thorough examination into the mental condition of 
Chanler and pronounced him sane. But the man is still 
"civiliter mortuus" in New York — that is, still legally a lu- 
natic in that State, and he dare not go there for fear of re- 
arrest and a second period of confinement. 

His Object in Writing. 

Mr. Chanler's one object in life now appears to be the 
establishment, beyond a perad venture of a doubt, of the popu- 
ular belief in his sanity. Incidentally, he also desires to let 
the public know how badly he has been treated — or thinks he 
has been treated — by some of his kinspeople. For 1 Ithe most 

uracy caused by fear *f antagonizing "The seats of the 



part, he lets other folks — witnesses, physicians, and lawyers — 
tell his story, though his own interpolated explanations lend 
special charm to the volume. The book at times is successively 
abusive, aggressive, ironical and savage towards those who, 
in the authors opinion, have done him wrong. It would 
hardly be fair to discuss this feature of it here. 

The thoughtful man undoubtedly will derive more pleas- 
ure from reading the splendidly written opinions of the many 
experts who have examined Mr. Chanler. 

In June, 1897, while the author was confined in the asy- 
lum he surreptitiously prepared and sent to Captain Mica j ah. 
Woods, the famous Charlottesville lawyer, a thirty-seven-page 
letter, setting forth the facts leading up to his incarceration 
and pleading for help. 

This communication is a masterpiece of English, and 
withal so irresistibly interesting that no reader can lay it 
aside. In the letter Chanler goes into many details about his 
psychological and metaphysical studies — the researches which 
ultimately caused him so much trouble. The following para- 
graph is characteristic : 

"I must tell you that for some years past I have been 
carrying on investigations in Esoteric Buddhism. You must 
not imagine from this that I am not a Christian, for I am a 
communicant in the Episcopal Church. My investigations 
were entirely scientific in their nature and totally free from 
any tinge of religion. They supposed a state of mind open 
to impressions and free from prejudices." 

Then he tells how Stanford White, his friend, and the 
man murdered by Harry Thaw, coaxed him from Virginia 
to New York, where he was seized and taken to the hospital. 

A little later Chanler explains that some time previous 
to this incident, his eyes had undergone a remarkable change 
of color. They had turned from brown to gray. It was his 
comments on this fact which led people to think that he was a 
victim of dementia. In his letter to Captain Woods, he says 
apropos of this: 

"At all events, they were light brown. The extraneous 
and corroborative evidence of this fact is a description of Der- 
ing's eyes on page 39 of the latest edition of 'The Quick or 

• .n the teeth o 
y. Virginia—this County-- 
J competent--und»r the jurisdiction of which Coo. 
sided J The conspirators presumably do this foolhardy thing on the 
: "Tell a lie and stick to it." 



G 

the Dead,' which I enclose, having been sketched from me. I 
allude to the features, of course, the occurrences in the book 
being entirely imaginary. I have the Princess Troubetzkoy's 
vord for this; it is also a matter of almost common knowl- 
edge, the New York World having published an article on the 
Princess Troubetzkoy in February, 1896, if I remember right- 
ly, which quoted as descriptive of me the passage above re- 
ferred to on page 39 of "The Quick or the Dead;" and the 
writer of the said article vouched for its correctness as a de- 
scription of my personal appearance in the article itself. 

"You will observe that Dering's eyes are described as the 
color of 'autumn pools in sunlight.' I need not say to a Vir- 
ginian that the color of autumn pools in the sunlight is brown 
— a sparkling or bright brown. The pools meant are the deep 
quiet places in the streams into which the dead leaves fall, 
covering the bottom and giving a dark brown appearance to 
the water, which is lightened or brightened when the sun 
plays upon the pool." 

A foot note following this paragraph quotes an affidavit 
from the Princess Troubetzkoy, which substantiates what the 
author says. 

Automatic Writing. 

The documents published in connection with the court 
proceedings, for the most part, give the views of expert alien- 
ists who examined Mr. Chanler. Here is what Joseph Jas- 
trow, professor of psychology in the University of Wisconsin, 
says of the author: "Mr. C, according to his own account and 
in conformity with the evidence which has been submitted to 
me, exercises a form of automatic activity known as auto- 
matic writing, and by some writers called! 'graphic automa- 
tism.' ; He is able to produce, and apparently at almost any 
time at request, a form of writing in which his intentional 
and usual control and direction participate to a reduced ex- 
tent, and may be almost absent. Such automatic writing is 
a, well recognized phenomenon occurring not rarely, but yet 
unusually, and finds its place among a series of psychological 
activities, which are in a large part of a complex co-ordinated 
and reasoned type, but which are none the less not the inten- 
tional expression of the ordinary, fully conscious thought." 



A Mediumistic Temperament. 

Dr. William James, professor of psychology at Harvard, 
in his written opinion of the author, says, among other things : 

"Mr. Chanler is evidently possessed of a strongly 'medi- 
umistic' or 'psychic' temperament, but whereas most mediums 
promptly adopt the theory, current in spritualistic circles, 
that these automatisms are due to spirit-control, Mr. Chanler, 
prepossessed against that hypothesis, appears to have set to 
work systematically (and as would appear from his narra- 
tive, critically) to explore them and determine their signifi- 
cance for himself. 

In this attempt he seems to me to deserve nothing but 
praise. The only question is of the amount of judiciousness 
shown in allowing the subject to absorb him so continuously. 
The most injudicious act of which he is accused is the experi- 
ment with fire. As described, its motivation was rational and 
its results interesting, and but moderately harmful. It seems to 
me a monstrous claim to say that a man may not make exfpe- 
riments, even as extreme as that, upon his own person, with- 
out putting his legal freedom in jeopardy. The Napoleon 
experiment (going oil' into a trance-like state), falls strictly 
within the limits of praiseworthy research." 

Answers Other Side. 

Other alienists of equal fame and ability as those quoted 
have also submitted their views as to Mr. Chanler's condition, 
and all these appear in full in the volume, but their opinions 
cannot be given here. 

Suffice it to say that the author produces a powerful ar- 
ray of authorites to show that he has been unjustly dealt with. 

Nor does he flinch at presenting the other side of the 
case, too. The reader is allowed to peruse the testimony of 
those who thought that Mr. Chanler should be confined in 
Bloomingdale. This evidence is discussed by the author with 
a power of analysis which could not be surpassed, and a de- 
gree of acrimony which shows how bitterly he resents the 
course of those who thought him 'non conroos mentis.' 



8 



As one goes deeper and deeper into the strange volume 
which has no parallel in literature, one finds himself thor- 
oughly engrossed with the unusual subject-matter, and almost 
from the start the reader's sympathy is insensibly drawn to- 
wards Mr. Chanler. Truly, he is one man in a million, while 
his life-story is little short of thrilling. But after all, it is 
the wide scholarship of the author which makes him com- 
mand attention and adds luster to his every paragraph. 

As the volume contains certain passages wherein Mr. 
Chanler's indignation seemingly makes him almost libellous, 
the book will not be handled by any of the Richmond houses. 
It can, however, be procured by writing to the Palmetto Press, 
Roanoke Rapids, N. C. Those who wish to burn the mid- 
night oil over something unique, should get it." 

"EVAN R, CHESTERMAK" 



"Mo Times for the Satirist/' 

"LITERARY DIGEST," New York, September 28, 1918. 

Satire as a literary form is seen to be proving itself fit only for 
the piping times of peace. And it apparently takes itself too seriously 
even then. Given a cataclysm like the present war and this literary 
instrument which took itself on occasions as the most powerful in the 
writer's armory, appears puny enough; while all the evils it ever 
thought itself born to combat become more like Don Quixote's wind- 
mills than real soldiers. A rather wide range of examples in proof of 
such contentions is gathered up by a writer in the New York "Evening 
Post"; 'with such gigantic evils stalking at large, with brutality, lust, 
and every other passion loosed, with millions facing the foe in hot 
anger, satire seems a trumpery rapier'. Naming over the professional 
satirists who gave the world some few thrills to relieve its boredom, 
this writer observes that 'Since August, 1914 unchained the terrible 
wickedness that had been sleeping before, the favorite satire of pre- 
war times has taken on a look of puniness'. Here we have not had a 
satirist to do what Cervantes did for the literature of chivalry, Butler 
for Puritanism in 'Hudibras', and Voltaire for formalist superstition 
in 'Candide'. But after all, satire cannot cope with cataclysms. The 
immense abuses connected with or sheltered by the war our -Joe is 
ivaging are beyond its province; they demand the thunde. ■•tones of a 
Carlyle or Isaiah in overwhelming denunciation. We cannot be ironic, 
sarcastic, or invidiously witty about such evils; we must shoio a blaz- 
ing indignation - - -. 'A great conflagration of wrath is needed'. 
The old boastfulness of satire 'appears more than a little ludicrous', 
says the writer here, and few will gainsay him." 

Do we fill a long-felt want, peradventure, in "Pieces Of Eight," and 
"Scorpio", or does this question suggest "the old boastfulness of satire" 
as peradventure — "The Scarlet Women" and "A Missionary" emphasize 

its puniness? 

J. A. C. 
"The Merry Mills," 
September 25, 1918. 

DON QUIXOTE UP-TO-DATE. 

"Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away." 

— "Don Juan" — Lord Byron. 

Cervantes, I have turned the trick on thee! 

By chivalry laugh I at foul today 

And paint the sordid villainies I see 

By use of metaphor and roundelay. 

The d — d accursed mercenary lech., 

That marks these villainous commercial times 

Affords my Muse the chance her wings to stretch 

And ring the changes on her silv'ry chimes. 

Mounted on Pegasus I charge a-main! 

And with my steel-tipped lancet attack the rich — 

With it I search their vitals — give 'em pain. 

Meantime, the doing o't doth the Muse enrich. 

An old-time knight-errant to th' manner born 

I make knaves siveat when I do wind my horn! 



t Pen. 

"Scorjrio No. II." 
Sonnet One Hundred and Sixty-seven. 




Mnlbn fat §>mvpw Nn* II 




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The unusual course of sending three books to the press at one 
and the same time has been followed for the reason that two of the 
said books have already been sent to Great Britain and — as the re- 
views accompanying them indicate — very well received by our British 
ally — and the third started for Liverpool only a short while ago. 

The two which already have been reviewed — and in the same 
order — in Great Britain are "Pieces of Eight" and "Hell And 'The 
Infernal Comedy' ". 

Since "Pieces of Eight" is even more ferocious than "The Hymn 
of Hate", and antidated the Hun effusion by a year or more, if we re- 
member rightly, it occurred to us to allow our fair and dauntless ally, 
France, to see how fiercely we yearned to leap to her aid in August, 
1914. We said nothing about said desire openly — but a blind man, 
almost, could read our passionate desire so to do between the lines. 
We said nothing, because we knew full well that in his "Farewell Ad- 
dress" Washington's dictum "no intangling alliances", with foreign 
nations, was so bred in the American bone that nothing short of an 
act of war by the Hun could urge us into war. Times have changed — 
"tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis" — and cynical and distrust- 
ful as we are of anything resembling rose color, we can assure France 
that the sentiment is crystalising day by day in this country in favor 
of universal conscription, and an adequate navy, so sson as the Great 
War is over. The United States has been caught napping for the first 
and last time. France is our Historic Ally, and will ever so remain. 

May the God of Battles grant that America may be able to be as 
prominent in restoring Alsace and Lorraine to France as France was 
in restoring liberty to America. The start that General Pershing has 
made to that glorious end on the Lorraine front, two days ago, is elo- 
quent of promise. 

Since "Hell And 'The Infernal Comedy' " had also been sent to 
Great Britain, and favorably reviewed, and also because at the rear it 
contains a very full line of reviews of our various literary work of the 
past ten years, we concluded to send it to France with "Pieces of Eight". 
And since "Scorpio No. II" has scarcely left the port of New York for 
Liverpool, we concluded to include that pungent — at times, shall we 
say? slightly Rabelaisian — body of one hundred and sixty-seven son- 
nets. Rabelais had occasion to laugh heartily at the administration of 
justice in his day — so have we. 

In conclusion. There are half a dozen or so sonnets written in 
French in "Pieces of Eight", and since writing same we have discovered 
that there are, here and there, typographical errors, and here and there, 
grammatical ones. We wish to apologize for our audacity in attempting 
such a daring thing, and offer our only excuse, to-wit: our French 
blood cried out for expression in that blood's own lovely and difficult 
tongue — we are a blood relative of Charlotte Corday d'Armont, and, 
thereby, of Pierre Corneille. (pp. 146-148, "Hell And 'The Infernal 
Comedy' "). 



We spent five years in Paris— five of the most glorious years of 
our accentuated and highly varied existence— and the Quartier Latin 
is as familiar to us as that of L'Arc de l'Etoile. We finished off our 
education in Paris. After three years at the military school of "St. 
John's School", Ossining-on-Hudson, New York, and two years at Rugby 
School England, and after acquiring an A. B. degree, and also an A. M. 
degree, at Columbia University, and thereafter being admitted a mem- 
ber of the bar of New York, we again crossed the ocean and haunted 
the museums and ateliers of painters and sculptors, for years, in the 
City of Light, and one winter took a course at the Sorbonne on the 
Psalms; at the College de Prance on the Crusades; and at l'Ecole des 
Sciences Politiques, on European diplomacy from Waterloo to date — 
under the late great Professor Leroy Beaulieu. 

Since we have not crossed the Atlantic for over twenty years our 
French is rather rusty, but we respectfully submit that said errors are 
more or less superficial, and with proper supervision by a French 
scholar our Muse can sing as passionately in the language of Cor- 
neille as in that of Shakespeare. Had a French scholar been within 
reach he could have filed away the roughness in the French sonnets in 
"Pieces of Eight". 

We have had the audacity to humbly follow in the footsteps of both 
Corneille and Shakespeare; and in our four blank-verse dramas: "The 
Hazard of the Die", "The Serpent of Old Nile", "Saul" and "Saul and 
David" — extracts from the first three of which are given at the rear 
of "Hell And 'The Infernal Comedy' " we have aimed at combining the 
longer speeches of main characters of Corneille with the Shakesperian 
form. To our mind, Shakespeare's speeches are too short — with the 
single exception of "Hamlet". The Bard of Avon stops his divine 
music too suddenly; shuts off his speeches too soon. 

JOHN ARMSTRONG CHALONER, 
"The Merry Mills," 

Cobham, 
Virginia. 

September 15th, 1918. 



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